She has reported from the frontline, embedded with coalition forces. She has covered terrorist attacks, political unrest and followed the rebuilding of the country.

Here she looks back on her time in Afghanistan.

I'm writing to you from where I've written many of my stories this year - the ABC's Kabul bureau. Well, it's more of a room, than a bureau. It's 12 paces long and eight paces wide. I don't have much of a commute to work in the morning - I just take a couple of steps from my bed to my desk. The walls of the room are sky blue and the window faces on to a galvanised iron fence covered in razor wire. It's difficult to see the real sky at all.

When I sit here I hear the world outside rather than see it. I hear the loudspeaker music of the ice-cream man who roams our bumpy neighbourhood. I hear bicycles with squeaky wheels, the rumbling of the wooden rubbish carts and the skidding tyres of accidents I don't see.

Our compound is not much bigger than a tennis court. Downstairs there's a safe room in case we come under attack. One night one of the blokes ran down there in his undies, thinking we'd been bombed, only to find out later the hot water service had blown up. Every few months earth tremors from the Hindu Kush rattle the walls and windows, but nothing more than a story to tell at breakfast.

This house has its own pace. Just before each meal one of the local workers walks to the bakery to get some warm, fresh Afghan bread. He takes a cotton bag and a stick carved with notches. Each notch represents five pieces of bread. It's tallied up at the end of each month when the baker is paid. The guys in the kitchen jokingly call the stick an Afghan credit card.

I just want to walk outside. I can't tell you the joy of that. Sometimes I want to go up to people and shake them and tell them how amazing it is.

But living in a compound is also a bit like being under house arrest. It's not safe for me to run outside around the neighbourhood on my own, so I clock up miles on a treadmill in the basement. With running comes loud music. The Afghan guards outside have heard everything from Frank Sinatra to Sowetan gospel and thundering bursts of Powderfinger. I sing and run and think. When the power stops suddenly, I do too. I can only hope that the music is louder than my swearing.

When I get out of here on leave every few months, all I want to do is walk. Walk, walk, walk. I barely visit any tourist sites. I just want to walk outside. I can't tell you the joy of that. Sometimes I want to go up to people and shake them and tell them how amazing it is. I get excited about the normality of it all - going to a supermarket without blast doors, entering a building without being searched, brushing my teeth with tap water, not having to wear a headscarf and just this joyful sense of being safe.

I'm sitting at my desk in the room with the sky blue walls, trying to think how to explain this place to you, how to explain what's beyond our compound walls, the real Afghanistan. I have fallen in love with this country, even though I have no right to feel a sense of belonging. I feel very strongly about the people, even though what happens here stretches all the way from humbling hospitality to numbing violence, suffering and lost potential. Some kind of irrational hook has kept me here. I don't question it much. As long as it's there, I am here and I love it.

But I have seen things here too that I wish I hadn't. Minutes I wish I could scratch away. Not so much for me, but for those whose lives have fractured in front of me.

I have fallen in love with this country ... even though what happens here stretches all the way from humbling hospitality to numbing violence, suffering and lost potential.

I still see one boy's face. His name was Abdul. He was an 11-year-old who had been injured in a blast in Kandahar. He was brought into the military hospital with half his face blown away. The bandages around his head were covered in dirt, gravel, blood and vomit. He screamed and cried, pleading for the pain to stop. Adbul's face was so badly injured, I spent most of the time filming his feet. His toes flexed with the waves of agony.

Abdul's suffering was not my fault but, as an adult, it was impossible not to feel responsible. I remember standing there thinking how utterly wrong it was that, live or die, this child would think this was what life was. It was just wrong.

And to think it was intentional. Someone had sat in a dusty compound somewhere, patiently lacing a homemade bomb with the nails and ball bearings that tore through this boy. A child should never know that life could be like that. The next day Abdul's dead body was carried out of the hospital, wrapped in a white sheet and cradled in the arms of his father.

I have never found violence exciting or interesting. Sometimes, the ugliest thing at the scene of a terrorist attack is not the blood and the bodies, but the intent. It's something that is almost still hanging in the air. Often journalists are given access to the scene soon after a suicide bombing. Sometimes, I've walked up the same stairs or through the same doorway as the bomber and I can't imagine what they must have been thinking in those final seconds. It's the intent. Something of the intent is still there.

But the kindness of the people has been just as deliberate too. One Saturday afternoon, we climbed a hill on the outskirts of Kabul to interview the family of a police officer killed in a suicide bombing. Samiullah Khan had hugged the bomber to shield his colleagues from the blast. His grieving family wanted to make us lunch and cups of tea. His brother said, "We will put aside our sadness to take care of you as our guests." It was very, very Afghan. My words fell away.

I've walked up the same stairs or through the same doorway as the bomber and I can't imagine what they must have been thinking in those final seconds.

That's the Afghanistan I will take with me. I'll take the frustration and the madness of this place too. But I'll remember families like that. It's what doesn't come through on the television or radio news. I know that I will miss this place. It's become normal and Australia has become somewhere that feels a bit jumbled and strange to me now.

I went back to Australia in August, after the helicopter crash that killed ABC colleagues Paul Lockyer, John Bean and Gary Ticehurst. Paul Lockyer's memorial service was held at a school chapel in Sydney. That morning, students were competing in a sports carnival down on the nearby school oval. As I walked past I could see picnics and parents in deck chairs. But when the starter's gun fired at the beginning of a kids race, I ducked. I thought the shot was real.

In the hours that followed, sitting in the chapel, listening to the accounts of Paul Lockyer's life, it was a celebration of family and integrity. Paul had been a foreign correspondent too. He'd taken risks and been to the bad places. But he'd moved on. He had a family and went on to use his empathy and professionalism to give voice the people of rural and regional Australia. He didn't need a war zone to tell strong stories.

I don't know what it will be like to finally come home. I'm excited and I'll be relieved to get out of here safely. But I will carry thoughts of Afghanistan, always.